The water drips down the wall...

Writing Exercise - "Kling Klang" by Kraftwerk

In this exercise I tried to continue with the character that I created in the previous one - the synchronised human cyborg superhero. What would make this character interesting to play? What sort of world would this character exist in? These are the issues that I set my mind upon at the beginning of this exercise.

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The water drips down the wall. The light is coming in sporadic bursts - probably from a sporadic broken neon sign outside the building that I'm trapped in, waiting and hiding. I take deep, slow breaths, try to reduce my heartbeat. I don't know what they can hear, what frequency they're searching on. They don't know how to easily find me, I do know that. I'm like nothing they've had to hunt for before. And up until very very recently, I was on their side.

They never thought that I'd go off mission - didn't even think that I could. They assumed that whoever made me programmed me to well for that.

And in one way, they're right. I'm not the traitor that everybody seems to think that I am. I'm running now because I found something out that I wasn't supposed to - isn't that always the way? Hopefully my own story follows the stereotype, and I'm able to get out of here, and publicize the information that I found. The information that is currently burning away at my processors it's so horrific.

My breathing is under control, my processors have cooled down, and I know that it's now or never. I begin to move stealthily through the abandoned building. This sort of slum is more and more common now. People just give up living, die in their sleep, and no one bothers to clean them up. They'll decompose soon enough, it's assumed. Beneath my heavy tread something squelches, and I avoid looking down, knowing that most likely I've stepped on the decomposing body of somebody who gave up a long time ago. A crack tells me that they probably died a long time ago, and that there's very little organic material left to cushion the sound of bones breaking.

This is what our thriving world has come to - decomposing bodies in abandoned buildings. But no one does anything because the only people whose opinions actually matter don't see the real world anymore. They move about in their virtual realities of choice, their eyes filtered by the environment dujour being pushed by the big companies. You can always spot these ones - their expressions aren't as downtrodden and hopeless as the people who can't afford to jack in, for one. But also, they're usually scarred with branding. Part of jacking in is signing up to a provider for a minimum two year plan. The brand gets burned onto your face or body for those two years. If you stay out the term of your plan, the brand dissolves. If you jump ship for a better offer from another provider, you have to get surgery to try and get rid of the brand. This usually goes horribly wrong. The indecisive ones are always easy to spot, their bodies are crisscrossed with competing crumpled logos.

The really rich are even easier for spot - for one, they don't have to leave their homes. They're so completely jacked in that they don't have to leave their homes to conduct their business, instead they control a robotic avatar that they send out for them. The robots gleam, their fluid casings sometimes transitioning as they glide along as their owners decide to change their appearance, either changing the chassis color or chopping off the hair or growing a tail. Even the really human-like robots are easy to spot though - there's something just a little bit off about them. Their eyes don't quite meet yours, their skin or fur or whatever is a little too reflective.

It's into this world that I step, pulling the hood of my sweater up in order to cover my distinctive hair. It's going to have to go, I think with a pang. It's been an identifier for too long, and the last thing I need now is to be easily identified. I need somewhere that I can go and hide out, and plan my next move. I need to figure out how to get what I know out there.

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The world of the game is obviously dystopic, abandoned in favor of a virtual reality. I like the idea of incorporating different "types" of people, as the player would need to figure out how to manage each type. Could the player sort of camp out in the home of someone who is completely jacked in? Or maybe there are some activists who take the player in, people who recognize the harm that being jacked in is doing to the environment and to the lower classes of humanity and are trying to rectify it.